Off the beaten track

One of my first memories of WoW is being a little baby druid and going on a pvp raid to Crossroads, We ran through Darkshore and Ashenvale staring at the scenary and finally we hit the Barrens. The change in music, the giraffes, both of us were just transfixed in wonder. We didn't actually make it to Crossroads as we were having connection problems at the point and we err lost the raid, but to our little lv 12's it was a huge adventure. We had felt Teldrassil seemed so huge so see the world map and all these so very different zones was amazing. We later found Crossroads and in fact those alliance toons probably spent more time in the Barrens than in Ironforge, better weather and all that.

Way before the explorer achievement was added to the game, I loved wandering off the beaten track, staring at the scenary and taking screenshots. Ideally I would love an extra explorer achievement or something to reward the people who don't just run around ticking off a prescribed list of destinations like sheep on package tour, but I suppose the second you give some tangible reward you ruin the point of it. That said, im working on a list of my must sees before you quit, a zone by zone description of the off the beaten track stuff and hard to miss quests. The plan is to start with Arathi but I'm busy doing the AQ quest line chain on my priest so its a little delayed.